In My Arms
by Satia Entreri
Summary: Jack Harkness and the 10th Doctor rescue humans from a slave-trader-ship - but as usual things become far worse then they would have assumed in the beginning.


**Title: In My Arms**  
**Category: TV Shows » Doctor Who**  
**Author: Satia Entreri**  
**Language: English, Rating: Rated: M**  
**Genre: Short story - Hurt/Comfort/Drama**

**Translation Assistence: the wonderful Jenny**

_Jack and the 10th Doctor are on a rescue mission that turns out bad for the two of them …_  
_I have dreamed this and despite the fact that I was working on another story at that time I HAD to write this down, because otherwise it would have haunted me for a long time._  
_This is a translation of a story that has been written down in one pass without any further work done to it - the translation of the first and only version of the story._  
_Sorry…_

**In My Arms**

He lies silently and completely exhausted in my arms … the otherwise so resilient, lively, laughing Doctor … and at the same time he seems to be further away than ever.  
It has taken a long time for him to stop fighting back against my embrace with a strength that I had not expected from him in his present condition.  
I don't know how I have known that I must not give up - that he needed being held, no matter how hard he fought back against it.  
Even though we are lying in this bed we are both fully dressed, but our clothes are damp. From the water of the shower, but also from our sweat … from his tears … and mine …

# # # #

A few hours ago …

It was just a few seconds that Jack had lost sight of the Doctor, but those had been enough for him to vanish.  
They had tiptoed through the corridors of the foreign ship to find the three kids who had been ripped from Earth by the aliens. A 14 years old boy and his two younger sisters.  
The Doctor and Jack had searched for the ship for several days and two days ago they had finally found it.  
The kidnappers had been humanoid slave traders - by look they did not differ that much from humans and Torchwood had found out that they appeared on Earth regulary to get „fresh goods" without having to expect any complications.  
Together they had assured that the slavers had not been as successful as usual, but they had agreed, that even these three humans were not acceptable and took up the chase.  
The Timelord knew this race of slave traders and the horror and the doggedness with which he had started his search had made it clear for Jack that he expected the worst for the children.  
And he had been right.  
The ship stank from the smell of the slaves that had not survived the transport and who, as Jack knew meanwhile, had been left often for days with the other prisoners in their cells before they had been disposed of - and it stank from the evaporations and excrements of those who were still alive.  
Who was not obedient immediately had been made being obedient - a process that cost further lifes. Since the Doctor had vanished about 36 hours ago, Jack had found one of the girls. For her brother and her sister every help had come too late. The sister had died from the torture that was meant to turn her obedient - and it had cost her brother his life trying to hinder the aliens from doing his sister any harm. All this had happened in front of the eyes of the now completely confused and frightened, maybe eleven years old girl, who clung like a bur to Jack and who was now, along with several other prisoners who had been freed by Jack on the hidden TARDIS.  
With every door Jack had opened during the last 36 hours on the foreign ship, his worry for the Tirmelord had become bigger. With every dead - but worse with every living, sexual and otherwise abused, tortured, broken, mostly undressed slave that he found worse pictures of horror forced themselves on his mind.  
And when on top a pile of disposed pants, skirts and shoes he found the clothes of the Doctor he had needed a full minute, while he was steadying himself against the wall and tried to breathe as calm as possible so that he would not freak out.  
Then finally he had grabbed the brown suit, in which he also had found the screwdriver. And without the need of looking closer he had found, with his senses of a human of the 51st century, the remaining clothes of the Timelord. He had bunched them into a bundle and attached it to his belt to take with him.  
All this had happened about one hour ago and Jack knew that he was finally on the right way, because he had been given specific hints from the last slave he had brought to their ship.  
While he grabbed the deadly firearm in his hand tighter, he laid his other hand shortly onto the clothes that he carried around in the bundle, as if he could reassure himself by doing so, that the Timelord was still alive. He knew that the Doctor could regenerate when he died, but he had been there when such a possible regeneration simply did not happen. The Timelords alone knew if there were other things that could go wrong than just the refusal to do the regeneration. And not for the first time he asked himself if he would even recognize the Doctor, should he maybe have regenerated already and be unconscious, so that he could not reveal himself to Jack.  
And all of a sudden he knew that the Doctor was still there - in the form he knew - because he had still the same voice. The one that now echoed with a screaming, unbelievably angry and the same time brittle „NO!" through the corridors of the slave ship.  
Loud voices of the slave traders mixed with sounds of fight and pain - then everything was quiet very abruptly and the voice of the Doctor could only be heard one more time in form of a painfully twisted moan. To that a sound followed one that sounded like a sob, one that came clearly from a woman.  
Jack wanted to dart into the room immediately, but he knew that he could not handle this more stupidly. He had found him. If he became careless now, they would both not leave this ship ever.  
So he waited.  
Hidden in a corner he watched, how several slaves - lots of them dead - were pulled out of the room by dragging them over the floor. He recognised one of the women by her whimper as the one he had heard before.  
„That's a tough one", one of the aliens laughed, while he pushed the women in front of him to walk faster. His collegue, who pulled a man at his hairs beside him nodded angrily.  
„I don't see the sense in wasting so many good slaves just to make him talk. Seriously though- his ship can't be worth that much, can it?"  
The other one shrugged.  
„I think it is more important to the boss to learn how he managed to come aboard, to avoid that from happening ever again. But we should not bother our heads with this. The guy has a few hours time to think about talking or not, and then we give him another proper ‚talking'"  
When his collegue laughed and made an obvious movement with his lower body, Jack nearly jumped out of his hiding spot. But he pulled himself together and stayed where he was.  
With that last gesture they had finally passed Jack.  
He waited another moment, assured himself that there really was no one else left in the corridor anymore and hastily progressed further into the direction where the scream of the Doctor had come from.  
The door was - which made him very suspicious - just ajar.  
The stench from the room nearly took Jacks breath away.  
He listened for quite a while, until he could hear eventually one single person breathing.  
As quiet whimpering mixed into the heavy breathing he knew that he had found him.  
Carefully he opened the door.  
His weapon trained at the ready.  
With skilled eyes he checked if any of cameras that he had seen all around the ship were active in this room. But there were none.  
The floor was a mixture of black and red dried and some fresh puddles. The walls did not look much differently.  
Rings of metal were set into the walls in regular distances. Off several hang metal chains with one or two manacles at their ends to fasten around limbs.  
When he saw the Doctor he was unable to prevent the shocked sound that built up inside of him immediately.  
The Timelord crouched on the floor at the wall. His legs pulled to himself as close as his position allowed. The manacles of the chains that held him had left deep cuts at his wrists. Trickles of his very dark blood had run from those cuts along his lower arms.  
His blood out of countless wounds could be found everywhere on his naked body.  
He looked similar to lots of the slaves Jack had found and who he had not been able to do anything for anymore - but he lived.  
It nearly broke his heart to see how the Doctor tried to jump up and failed in it, when the timeagent entered the room.  
„Shhhhh!", was the first sound Jack made, followed from an instantaneous „It's me, Doctor. Jack!"  
The relieved gasp of the Timelord sounded far stronger than Jack had anticipated because of the Doctors condition.  
With one step he was with him, put his weapon away, pulled the Doctor's screwdriver out of his pocket instead and detatched the menacles from the Timelord's wrists.  
He breathed a bit faster, when he saw the exact damage of what the metal had done, but he tried to dissemble it.  
He wanted so much to clean the face and the body of the Doctor from the dirt and the blood and care for his wounds, but there was not time for that. He wanted to help the Timelord to get up, but he pushed his hands with a declining gesture away and got up, step by step, on his own. When the tall, thin man finally stood and looked at Jack with a crooked smile, seemingly because he was unable to walk alone, Jack swallowed again.  
„Good to see you, Jack", the Timelord said in his typical cheery manner. „The hospitality of this race leaves much to be desired." He pointed to the bundle at Jacks belt. „Do you mind if I put on these?"  
Jack looked down at himself and started with an „Oh! Of course!" to loosen the bundle from his belt and helped the Doctor, as dirty and bloodstained as he was, to get into his clothes as fast as possible.  
It was more than obvious that the Doctor did not want to be touched by Jack, but he had to concede that it would take him too long if he did not accept his help.  
The whole extend of the injuries the Timelord had suffered became more clear with every movement he made. He moved clumsily and was unable to suppress every sound that the pain forced him to make. But he dressed as fast as he could with Jack's help and informed him during that time about what had happened.  
„They know that I can only have come aboard with my ship because they register transporter activity - and there was none. They wanted to know where my ship was. When they started to torture other prisoners to make me talk I was very close to do so, but then they made it clear that they would not stop the torturing even if I told them the location of the ship …" he fell silent for a moment and the horror to not have given anything away was visible on this face. Then he inhaled deeply and continued to speak - all of a sudden in another, nearly cheerful way: „Besides I heard, very much to my delight …" he grinned at Jack as much as possible when saying that „… that they were very angry about the fact, that one slave of theirs after the other had disappeared." He patted Jack on the shoulder while steadying himself against the wall with his other hand so that he would not fall.  
Like the Doctor, Jack tried to behave as if everything were quite all right and grinned at him. „I am sure about that. Were the TARDIS not as big we would have a spatial issue by now. I placed them in the area that you showed me on our first day here."  
The Time Lord nodded.  
„The children? Did you find them?"  
Jack sighed and hung his head before he lifted it again and looked at the Doctor.  
„Just the smallest one. She is on the TARDIS. The other two … are dead …"  
The angry and disappointed sound the Doctor made mirrored Jack's own emotion and the same time it was completely without any accusation.  
„You have done, what you could, Jack. Come on. We have to end this here."  
Jack looked incredulously at the Time Lord.  
„Doctor, I don't want to talk you out of anything, but you don't make the impression that you are able to make any big leaps."  
The way the Doctor looked at Jack made him shiver with cold. (gave him a chill?)  
„I don't have to. I just need a few minutes with my screwdriver and one of the consoles of this ship and the problem will be solved." He held out his hand and obviously waited to get his tool back.  
His gaze was still so hardened that Jack hesitated for a moment, but then he pulled the screwdriver from his pocket again and put it into the hand of his friend.  
The Doctor clutched the Screwdriver like a knife and pushed himself carefully from the wall. His first steps were wobbly and uncertain and suddenly he clasped his waist with one arm, but when Jack wanted to help him and therefore put his hand on the small of his back, the Timelord jerked away with a hissed „No!" in a way, that made him nearly stumble.  
„What did they do to you?", Jack asked quietly in a slightly hoarse tone.  
The Doctor did not answer to that, but eventually left the room and searched with wobbly steps for a console, a screen, an access point to the system of the ship..  
When he found one relatively fast, he ripped the cover with an angry gesture away from the small screen and started immediately do tweak some settings with the screwdriver.  
„What are you doing?" Jack asked, while he kept the corridors in view so no unwanted surprises could disturb the Doctor in what he was doing.  
„First I'm interrupting their option of communication with each other or with other ships." the Time Lord mumbled away. Completely exhausted but with an eager expression, he pressed his forehead against the wall above the screen - so close over the screen that he was still able to see what was on it. „And then …" he put his head a bit to the side, so that could look at Jack with a smile that made Jack's blood run cold „ … I'm deciding that the life of nearly two hundred slaves on this ships is more important than the life of the two dozen crewmembers who captured them" …" , with a determined expression he pressed on the screwdriver and apparently started some functions, „ … tortured them …", another pressure to the Screwdriver - some signs blinked on the screen „… abused them …", another adjustment done with a hardened expression, the forehead still braced against the edge of the screen, „ …. Killed them ….". A warning sign blinked on the screen and the Doctor pressed the screwdriver one more time, „ … and …", he gasped the words, „ … loved … doing … it …"  
A loud warning sound echoed through the corridors of the ship.  
The Doctor lifted his head and looked with a slightly open mouth to the wall of the corridor, then into the corridor - and then at Jack.  
„That was it. I've released something into the atmosphere that is toxic to them, but not to humans or Timelords. I've had enough … to … taste of them … to be sure with my analysis." He laughed bitterly „The abilities of a Time Lord are sometimes useful for the most scurrilous things, right?"  
Jack felt unable to say anything and so they just started together to look into cell after cell, freeing all the remaining slaves who had survived their ordeal and brought them into the TARDIS.  
They did not encounter anyone of the crew again and neither the Doctor nor Jack searched for them.  
When they searched with help of the TARDIS for maybe undetected life forms, so that they would not forget someone - and none were shown on the readings - they finally shut the doors of the TARDIS and started their way back to earth.  
More stories of abductions would find their way into history of humanity. But since they would return the abductees each to where they had come from, the chance that anyone would believe their stories was very unlikely. Eventually they had returned even the last one and Jack closed the door of the TARDIS for the last time at that day.  
When he turned around and looked at the Doctor, who had spent the last hours at the Console and tanken care that every single one of the prisoners would be brought back to the exact place where he or she had come from (after Jack had given them enough Retcon) his thought was, not for the first time, that it was finally about time that the Doctor himself was patched up.  
The Timelord had told him that he, especially in the TARDIS, healed much faster than a human would do. But apart from the fact that Jack had seen now and than that blood had dripped from his wounds to the console the terrible smell of the prison cells was still all around them. It did not just linger in the room, but stuck, quite literally, to the Timlord as well.  
Just at the moment when Jack asked himself if the Doctor was really able to handle all that had happened quite so well as it seemed, he had turned around with a downright haunted face to the side, lunged from the grid of the console platform down to the plain floor beneath in a way that made him nearly fall down, clasped his middle with both arms and choked. He fell forwards to his knees, supported himself with one arm, while the other still clasped his middle and threw up violently.  
It took Jack one heartbeat to be with him. He knelt beside him and embraced him from behind. As if he had beaten him with this tender, friendly gesture the Time Lord screamed out and pushed him away.  
„DON'T … touch … me…!"  
An injured and cornered large cat could not have made it clear in a more threatening way. The view of the Doctor was deadly and it took several seconds before that changed slowly until he lowered his head.  
„I am sorry … I am … sorry … Jack."  
„No problem, Doctor." Jacks voice was as soft as possible.  
He had to clean the Doctor somehow from this filth. He knew that the senses of the Timelord were as highly developed as his - maybe even much more - and if this smell drove him nearly crazy, than it had to be a nightmare for the Timelord.  
He approached his friend again and held his hands in a suggested inviting gesture close to his body, to ask him without words if it were okay to be touched by him.  
It took a while, then the Doctor nodded slightly and allowed Jack to help him up.  
When Jack had managed to bring the Doctor to his own quarters to place him under streaming water, the fight began. The touch of the water the Time Lord had accepted. He was unable to stand that long, so he simply had sat down to get rinsed by the water. But this way, the filth did not get washed up completely and his wounds needed to be cleaned. Therefore Jack had undressed as well and cleaned himself fast but thoroughly before he turned to the Doctor.  
Every touch was too much.  
Every touch to clean the wounds was pain.  
Jack did not know if there would be scars left at the beautiful wrists of his long, small hands. The surface was downright shredded apart … as it seemed he had tried like a mad man to get his hands out of the manacles.  
His lower body was cluttered with bruises - as was his belly … his shoulders …  
Even if they had not gotten wet from the running water during this, because of the weakness of the Timelord, very unequal fight, Jack's face would have been wet, as tears were constantly running down his cheeks while he fought, for the best of the Timelord, against his desperate and panicked attempts not to be touched.  
It was so blatantly obvious what they had done to him, that in this Moment Jack nearly wished they had found a more spectacular way to kill the slave traders. He managed to clean the Doctor from all filth that could be washed away and to treat his wounds with a salve. He found night garments and dressed him and himself in some of it and after a long time he eventually managed to bring the Timelord into his bed and to coerce him … after more tears … into allowing that Jack stayed with him …

He lies silently and completely exhausted in my arms … the otherwise so resilient, lively, laughing Doctor … and at the same time he seems to be further away than ever.  
It has taken a long time for him to stop fighting back against my embrace with a strength that I had not expected from him in his present condition.  
I don't know how I have known that I must not give up - that he needed being held, no matter how hard he fought back against it.  
Even though we are lying in this bed we are both fully dressed, but our clothes are damp. From the water of the shower, but also from our sweat … from his tears … and mine …

But in this moment - finally - my face brightens up with a smile …  
He lies with his back against my chest. My arms are wrapped around him and I hold him with all the love I have felt for him for so very long. And in this moment I feel how his hands lay down on my arms.  
He no longer just endures, but embraces … no longer just stands it, but accepts …  
All of a sudden his pose changes and he lays himself more comfortably, presses himself deeper into my embrace and holds my arms tighter against his body.  
I feel the dressings around his wrists on my skin.  
„Everything will be all right" I hear myself whisper.  
And as unexpected as welcome I hear him laugh, quietly but genuinely and feel him nodding against my body.  
„Yes … it will be … because you were there, Jack."  
He turns around to me so that he can see me.  
„Because you are still here …"  
His look sets my heart to flames and I pull him carefully but a bit more tightly into my arms, while he snuggles again comfortably against me and breathes out audibly and somehow even blissfully - and completely relaxed.  
The battle is won … he will heal … my Doctor …  
In my arms.


End file.
